[CFCDev] CF Pro vs Ent (was factory pattern)

[Patrick Branley]

Ok, my question / point got lost in the 'flame wars' of the other posts so ill start it again :)

So here is the problem:
pretty much any of the 'frameworks' out there have this requirement that you need to set up a mapping on the server. eg. something like farcry that requires the 'farcry' mapping to be set up on the server or even 'mach-ii' that its need for its own mapping.. or if you code an application using inerhitance based heirarchys... they all need a base mapping.

This is fine for phase 1 of your project or if you are deploying to your own dedicated server running CFPro.

but what about if you want to run a staging environment on a different version of the codebase that requires the mapping? eg. production site is on farcry1 and staging site is on farcry2 (the same thing may apply for incompatible versions of your own codebase too)

how do you solve this problem when running CFPro ? here are the options as i see it...

1.  Run Enterprise version with multiple instances for multiple environments

cons:
so now my cost goes up by 4x for software
and the hardware requirements for RAM espeically have increased. (512mb per instance)
i havent given the customer anything more thats worth paying for, just made my life a little easier when developing my app.

2. have source code set up with mapping as a variable that get replaced dynamically by a build script.

cons:
extra time to write a build script to do this for every application
source code cannot live on a dev server and  instantly be ready for testing/development - you have to 'build' your code to run it. its no longer as RAD as it used to be.

3. be carefull how you code and limit inheritance to only within the same folder.

cons:
now you cant have a global 'base object' thats shared across the application unless all the cfc's are in that same folder.
i do know about the WEB-INF cfcomponent folder trick, but this still has the same/similar problems as a mapping in a shared environment.

4. dont use inheritance

im sure some purists would argue this point also, but extends give you a very fast way of reusing code and for simple projects it makes alot of sense.

if anyone has an other options they would like to share, or a point of view on this issue. id love to hear it.

cheers

Pat



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